Evolutionary Voicings, Part 2

Last month we introduced you to jazz pianist Barry Harris’s approach to developing a chord voicing style based on two unique hybrid scales: the major 6 diminished scale and the minor 6 diminished scale. To recap briefly, the scales consist of two chords each: a major 6 and a diminished 7th, and a minor 6 and a diminished 7th, respectively. I hope you’ve enjoyed the exercises I’ve presented – and that you’ve practised them in all keys! The skills you develop by doing so will help you to “read into” the chord symbols you encounter on a typical fakebook chart.

The goal and beauty of this system is finding ways to move voicings along the appropriate hybrid scale in such a way that the motion leads into the next chord. Taking a II-V progression in D as an example, an Am7 flat 5 can be realized as a Cm6, which together with the Bdim7 chord forms the C minor 6 diminished scale (for a refresher, refer to Examples 6 and 10 in “Evolutionary Voicings, Part I” in the October ’98 issue). Moving a Cm6 voicing along that scale makes for a very interesting sound, and it leads nicely to the D7. Once on the D7, you could use a voicing from the Eflat minor 6 diminished scale, which is the altered scale for D7 (see Examples 10 and 11 in October).

In the following examples, I have voiced the minor 7th, minor 7flat5, and major 7th chords with their corresponding 6th chords (refer to Example 10 in October). Some of the 6th voicings contain notes borrowed from their associated diminished 7th chords (Example 19 in October). You’ll also find places where I’ve incorporated related dominant 7th voicings over a root dominant 7th (Examples 11 and 12 in October). Have fun applying these techniques to other tunes in your repertoire.

As we discussed in the October issue, the minor 6 diminished scale works great as an altered scale a half-step up from the root of a dominant 7th chord. Here is the D flat version of that scale voiced for use over a C7.

Here’s a ii-V-I in F that uses movement along the altered scale of the dominant.

Last month, we also introduced the idea of “borrowing” roots from dominant chords related to particular diminished 7th chords. Here the diminished voicing on beat 4 incorporates a borrowed root (B) on the fourth beat.